


A Wizard Did It

by ctimene



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: (it's okay they want to), Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Author Is Sleep Deprived, First Time, Fluff and Crack, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Matt has issues, foggy has powers, this started off as a joke and ended up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 19:05:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9562457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctimene/pseuds/ctimene
Summary: “You want to name yourself after weather?”“I have been a sentient statue on top of various churches for six centuries, I am all in for weather.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for the dub con that comes with any fuck or die scenario. Lemme know if there's any others I should add

Matt is perfectly willing to defend his life choices — and there are several he might have to defend in court one day — but even he can admit that the particular decisions that led to him bleeding from a shallow wound on the roof of a church were not his best. It’s not his church, or rather Father Lantom’s, but it is Catholic. He can tell by the smell. The Church of St Francis of Assisi, a couple of blocks outside the Kitchen.

It’s about the same distance from here to his own place or Claire’s, but neither seems very appealing. The bleeding’s already slowing. Another ten minutes and he’ll be ready to go again. He can already hear the sirens.

New York City disagrees with him. He puts a foot wrong, a tile slips out beneath him, and he has to fling his arms around the nearest statue to keep from pitching headfirst off the roof. The statue shifts a little, maybe half a centimetre, but holds firm. A voice like Stick’s sneers in his head about missing the rattle of the loose slate in the wind.

He pulls himself back to standing against the statue’s neck and takes a tentative step away.

And then the statue pulls him back.

“Woah, you alright- woah. _Woah_.”

Matt freezes. His mind does not have a protocol, a system, and anything, for statues that talk to him. Statues that can touch him. Statues that all of a sudden have a heartbeat that was not there before.

“You can hear me, right? I am not imagining this whole living, breathing again thing? Because that would be a very sad development in what is already a long and tragic tale.”

“St Francis?” Matt asks. Dressing up as the Devil was always going to get him in trouble, but even he was not expecting direct divine intervention.

“Oh, God, no! I mean, a lot of people have assumed, cause of context, and before that — I’m not even sure, no beard, can’t be Jesus? No, I’m your regular cursed human forced to be a statue and stuck on a church roof guy.” A beat. “I will admit that does not sound very regular but it’s more common than you’d think.”

“Really?” Matt’s not really doing well at incisive questioning but his conversation partner was a statue two minutes ago, he’ll give himself a break on this one.

“Well, I didn’t think it would ever happen, and then it did. To me. So that’s at least one time more common than never. Yeah.”

“When did this happen?” Matt briefly distracts himself from the utter absurdity of the situation with his much more rational thirst for justice. He’s not sure there was legal precedent for trapping someone in stone — unlawful imprisonment, perhaps? Image rights? — but where the law is vague, Daredevil is straightforward.

“Oh, six, maybe seven centuries ago,” the ex-statue says breezily. “I can’t actually remember what we were arguing about, but suddenly it was all cursing and chanting and honestly, I’m glad I have resting saint face or I really would have been smashed to pieces by now. I mean, I was lucky to survive the whole Reformation _and_ Oliver Cromwell.”

It occurs to Matt, fleetingly, that it’s really much more likely that his stab wound was deep and he’s hallucinating in the brief moments before dying on a church roof. Or, he fell off said roof and is in a coma. With a talking statue. Thank God he’s had almost thirty years to get used to the idea of eternal suffering.

Either way — bleeding, braindead, actually experiencing this, the weirdest thing to happen to New York including an _alien invasion_ and an undead ninja — Matt feels the rare but powerful urge to get solid ground beneath his feet. “Can you, uh, get down?”

“Sure!” The former statue shuffles on its plinth, then hesitates. “What if- What if this wears off? I mean, I’m fine with it-” he does not sound fine with it, and neither does his heart “-but that’s gonna be awkward for you, I mean, statue, not on roof, somewhere on the ground, not a great look.”

“I’ll make it look like you fell,” and it’s a practical solution, but then Matt puts together the way the statue has only made small, abortive movements, rolled a shoulder, flexed a hand, and he figures out the real fear underlying it. He probably should have been more reassuring about the permanence of curse breaking, or whatever.

Urgh, he remembers the days when superheroing was all muggers and corporate conspiracies, not _magic_.

“That’d be- uh- wise, I guess. Implausible but, hey, maybe I could be a miracle statue. I haven’t been properly venerated in ages, maybe I’d get restoration work done.” He still sounds a little subdued, but he steps off the pedestal and wobbles a little. “Uh, I know you got up here with the flipping and the stunts, but I’m going to take the stairs. Don’t worry, I know the alarm code.”

“How?” Matt has to ask. Everything is _baffling_ , he’s talking to a medieval statue that can crack burglar alarms, what is his life?

“Sound travels. And Father Gregory, the sort of deaf one, forgets it twice a month.”

Matt listens as the statue — the statue, _the statue_ , THE STATUE — picks his way gingerly across the roof to an access door that, yes, does sound like a tempting way down, but has nothing on leaping across to the next building’s fire escape and, okay, maybe a single flip on the way down. It’s not showing off. Matt just likes his airtime.

It’s also quicker, which is why he’s shifting from foot to foot in the shadows by the time the statue emerges. There’s a new rustle to his movement — he’s wearing a parka — and Matt can sense him peer around, miss Matt entirely, and then just stare up at the church.

“Over here,” he hisses.

The statue startles, but doesn’t move. “There you are! You know, I’ve never seen this place from the front. Always looking down. Well, down and sort of to the right, I have such a crick in my neck.”

Matt sort of lunges at him, tries to drag him into the alley, but the man is not to be moved. He’s _really_ heavy all of a sudden, too heavy, like the tiles on the roof should have cracked under his weight. Like ten minutes ago he was solid stone. He ends up just sort of clinging to the man’s raincoat, which is- odd. His face must do something visible, because the statue laughs.

“I borrowed it from the lost and found. Tunics and hose don’t seem to be all the rage these days. Here-” he bundles something soft and a little warm into Matt’s arms. It’s a hoodie, he realises. “You looked chilly.” _Chilly_. How does a medieval statue have this vocabulary? But he is, he notices absently, a little cold. The suit is great — sometimes over warm, in fact, between the leather and the stab-proofing — but it’s made for constant movement, not waiting for burglarising sculptures to make an appearance.

“We have to bring them back when we’re done though, they’re for the needy,” the statue adds.

We. Matt doesn’t even fight it, he found a statue, he brought it to life, this is his responsibility. He’s not very good at keeping it — him — in check though, because the idiot carving is already heading for a lamppost at top speed.

“At last, some light! How’s my face? I’m not being vain, I swear, but every other word out of people’s mouths these days is acid rain. Am I pockmarked? Because I completely avoided the pox in my day, you know, it seems unfair for my good looks to be ruined by excessive carbon emissions in the water cycle.”

“I can’t see your face.”

“Seriously? It’s right here-” Matt can’t actually feel the other man’s lightbulb moment, but it’s clear enough. “ _You’re blind?!_ But you’re the guy that backflips around Hell’s Kitchen dressed in a Halloween costume! Not my words, words of a nun. You can’t question nuns.”

“That doesn’t mean I can see,” Matt says testily. “And how did you know that?”

“You landed a backflip like four inches from my face. And you have _horns_. You might be the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, but the rest of New York has noticed. Oh, wow, I think I just- dude, I think I figured out how you broke the curse!”

“I did not break the curse!” This, this is the hill Matt will die on. Statues coming to life, fine, magic being a thing, fine, even curses, he will accept curses. But he does not break them. He is not Prince Charming. He is just an ordinary costumed vigilante with a slightly porous secret identity.

“Man, how does your jaw deal with all that grinding tension? Uh. Sorry. Phrasing. But, it’s like, Gerralt cursed me _until the day the Devil takes you_ , becuase he was kind of devout, for a warlock, but to go back to the phrasing thing, that’s actually key here, because you’re the Devil! Probably the only Devil most of New York believes in, attendance has really been down at church the last few decades, poor Sister Margaret’s going spare about it. What I mean it, you sort of- took me, I guess, off my plinth and wham, no curse, I owe you.”

“Yeah, sure, no,” Matt says, like a statue is going to repay him for — what, the gift of life? “I was just doing my, uh-”

“Nighttime recreational heroing? Well, either way, thanks.”

Matt turns and starts to head down the alley, the shadowiest route back to his apartment that’s not over a dozen rooftops. The statue doesn’t follow at once, so he goes back and grabs his coat hood.

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m _taking_ you home.”

It turns out adopting a stray statue is much like adopting a stray cat, only with more questions and fewer bathroom accidents.

(Lots of questions about the bathroom in particular. Running water, flushing toilets, liquid soap. Matt quickly figures out the best thing to do is teach his statue how to use Wikipedia. The internet, apparently, requires no explanation. Sister Margaret is a silver surfer. The pensioner kind, not the doom-bringing galactic being.)

Over that weekend Matt has a lot of conversations that push him more onto the ‘this is a dream during my inevitable coma’ side of the ledger. Such as:

“You can't remember your _name_?”

“Remember? Yes. Use? No. I'll come up with a new one.”

And:

“You want to name yourself after weather?”

“I have been a sentient statue on top of various churches for six centuries, I am all in for weather.”

And also:

“You’re six centuries old.”

“Give or take. I think I was born in 1420-ish.”

“You don’t sound 600 years old. You don’t sound British.”

“I have tried to move with the times, since I couldn’t move with anything else.” Foggy pauses, as if for laughter. Matt manages a strangled smile, and he snorts. “Thank you again, by the way, I am really enjoying this whole flexing my fingers thing, I’ve had a cramp since the sixties. I think it’s psychosomatic, but stretching is helping.”

“You know the word psychosomatic.”

“Well, yeah. The building next to the church? Fourteen shrinks have lived there or had offices there since 1890. Sound travels. I’d have gone out of my mind if I stuck to proper English.”

“Fourteen psychiatrists?”

“Yeah, New York takes a lot of head shrinking. Only thing that outnumbered them was lawyers, and man, that was dull to listen to. Oh, Christ, what’d I say to make your face do that?”

The weekend gives him time to notice things he didn’t before, like how Foggy is almost odourless, short on the combination of sweat and soap and shampoo that makes everyone else so obviously recognisable. Foggy smells like, well, limestone and chalk and occasionally what he’s eaten, though even that fades faster than it should. Magic, Matt supposes. A 600-year spell probably takes time to wear off.

Foggy learns about him too — both of him, Matt Murdock and Daredevil. He reads the name off Matt’s junkmail — he loves reading, having been confined to a single billboard opposite the church for more than a century — and once he’s apologised for the lawyer thing, he’s actually quite good at feigning interest in Matt’s work, his life, his… everything, really. The only drawback is how little there is to tell.

Eventually, however, Monday rolls around and Matt has to face the fact he has an entirely undocumented 597-year-old sleeping on his sofa. Snoring on his sofa, even. It's not something he's ever been prepared for. At some point, Foggy’s going to need papers, an identity. Matt doesn't make enough to keep feeding them both indefinitely, to be honest. Custom billy clubs cost a small fortune.

(He's not. Honest. About that. It's a difficult conversation for some other time, when Foggy isn't cooing over sliced bread and strawberry jelly. He doesn't eat much, to be fair, and he enjoys it all a lot, and Matt had kind of forgotten what it was like, to enjoy someone else's pleasure in a thing. Another time.)

So. Papers. He asks Claire, who fixes him in place with a long, withering pause and then says, “I'm gonna hope you didn't ask me because I'm Latina, and then I'm gonna stitch your shoulder and you're gonna remember I'm a respectable nurse and the only felons I know are wannabe _superheroes._ ”

He doesn't ask Karen, or Kirsten, or even Marci, though she's the shadiest of his lawyer friends who isn't literally evil. He’s not sure why, but Foggy feels like a Daredevil thing more than a Murdock thing, and keeping the peace between his friends and his identities is hard enough already. In the end, Jessica volunteers.

“Murdock, I hope you're more stealthy in the suit. Little bird told me you need an identity faked? Preferably not by a major crime family?”

“Can I afford to be picky?” Matt asks from the ground. Jessica always likes to say hi by dropping in, quite literally, on his head.

“I'm surprised you can't get it pro bono. You have more criminal clients than I do.”

“My clients are innocent,” he grouches. “Mostly.”

“I know a guy who knows a guy who had an affair and doesn't want there to be pictures. I can get you something, if you'll gimme a couple of weeks.”

“Sure.”

“And five grand.”

“I'll get back to you on that part.” He’s got it, but what she doesn’t know about his finances won’t kill her.

“Whatever.” She tilts her head slightly, and Matt knows she's frowning at him. “You know taking in strays isn't part of the job, right?”

“The job is helping people. He's people, now.”

“Now?”

“Long story.”

“S’what happens if you wear a costume, Murdock, the weirdos flock to you. Birds of a feather.”

He doesn’t tell Foggy at once, doesn’t want to get his hopes up. He’s started to realise that food costs money and has been researching jobs while Matt’s at work. Matt’s pretty sure at this point there’s nothing he couldn’t do, with 600 years of general knowledge behind him, but then they’ll hit a stumbling point like _spelling_ or how to use a remote control or remembering to turn off a tap and he can’t help but worry.

Still, that’s no real excuse for not introducing Foggy to, well, anybody else. Matt realises this as a mafia goon grinds his heel into Matt’s face before hefting him off the side of a building. He spends a good three seconds of freefall regretting everything in general and how poorly he’s provided for his statue roommate in particular before he’s yanked out of the fall by a hand on his collar.

“Hey Matt,” Foggy says pleasantly. “Nice night for it.” He’s leaning out from the fire escape and he’s got Matt in a steady grip, though he makes no move to pull him in. He must notice Matt’s confusion and hesitation, because he explains: “I don’t think I have the strength to pull you up, I’m afraid. I’m just sort of… solid.”

And he is. It’s like the night they met — Foggy’s hand and arm are undeniably flesh and blood, warm even through Matt’s gloves, but there’s a solidness to him like stone. Matt’s able to swing off his arm onto the fire escape without him moving an inch, and then Foggy just shakes it off. Matt spends a moment running his hands over Foggy’s arm and shoulder, feeling it shiver beneath him where seconds before it was still and firm.

Foggy swallows. “Did you have a criminal to catch, or...?”

“Right,” Matt murmurs and heads back up to the roof, where his goon is having a very premature post-murder cigarette. He senses, during the subsequent fight, that Foggy’s followed him up, is watching from the shadows. He might flip a little bit more than usual, but no more than the goon deserves for throwing him off a building.

(Matt is familiar with the concept of hypocrisy, but hey, at least he sniffs for convenient dumpsters first.)

He gets the guy on the ground when Foggy rushes forwards and puts his hand on the mafioso’s chest. “Get your breath back, I’ll keep him here.”

“You’ll what?” Matt has not actually sustained any head wounds, but he’s starting to think Foggy just has this effect on him, wrongfoots him. He gets it sometimes when they’re in the apartment too, Foggy’ll make a joke, or laugh, or give Matt one of his spontaneous hugs (he’s so _tactile_ ) and Matt’s head will spin and his pulse will race with, with… with the surrealism of it all. His statue friend.

His statue, apparently wannabe-vigilante sidekick, friend. Foggy’s sitting cross-legged on the roof now, one hand still on the bad guy’s chest, as calm as anything. “I’ll hold him down until you- well, I’m not sure what you do now, do you tie them up? Call the cops? I’m familiar with the fighting crime part, but I’ve never asked about the endgame. Hey, there’s a washing line by that vent, we could use that.”

Matt gapes for a moment, then, almost against his will, turns to get the line. The goon starts struggling and Foggy just tuts at him. Matt imagines that solidness holding him in place and understands. Just for a moment, he thinks about Foggy holding him down, with no effort and shivers in… fear? Weird, he’s not afraid of Foggy but… must be fear.

It’s only as Matt turns back with the line in hand that the goon recovers himself enough to aim a punch at Foggy’s jaw. Even without the supersenses, Matt would’ve heard the bones in his fingers break from across the roof. The howl of pain, too, though that’s probably a given.

“It’s not really your night, is it?” Foggy asks the idiot sympathetically. “I’m not crushing your chest, am I? Let me know if you can’t breathe. Preferably not by punching me again, that won’t go well.”

It falls to Matt to hogtie the guy, who is much more amenable to being manhandled into position by Foggy and his concrete grip. Then they have to book it, and quick, because some concerned citizen has already contacted New York’s finest and Matt’s sort of on the outs with the NYPD at the moment. Foggy’s newfound talents don’t stretch to parkour, so they end up crouched in the shadows on a fire escape barely half a block over, hiding from a fairly lacklustre search party.

Eventually the sounds of sirens die away, as much as they ever do, and Matt straightens up and slips down the ladder. Foggy clatters after him. At the bottom, Matt wheels on him.

“Don’t do that again.”

“The noise? Sorry, I’ll try to learn your weird stealth tiptoeing.”

“I don’t tiptoe! And I meant following me.”

“Oh! I didn’t.”

“What, you just happened to be climbing up to a roof?”

Foggy shuffles awkwardly. “I wanted to do some thinking. Need to be up high. And your roof is great, don’t get me wrong, excellent purchase, well done, but the sightlines are terrible. Which, obviously, not a problem for you! So I picked the tallest building I could find with terrible door security.”

Matt’s struck by the thought that in other circumstances, Foggy could easily turn to a life of affable crime. “Fine. But don’t intervene like that again.”

“Uh, don’t help you? Nah. C’mon, Matty, I owe you.”

Matt casts around for a reason. He has plenty, he knows he has them, but his mind just isn’t reaching them, too occupied with the fluttering in his chest, the catch in his breath, that must be panic. “What if you fell off a roof?”

“Seriously? You’re leading with _the thing you just did_?”

“Clearly it’s an occupational hazard.”

“I was a statue! It was an occupational hazard for 600 years!”

“You could get hurt,” Matt shout-whispers, and reaches up to touch Foggy’s face, where he was socked, just to prove his point. Foggy takes a quick breath, almost as though he’s in pain, but there’s no hint of swelling, no extra warmth to his skin.

“Uh, Matt?” he says. “Mr Daredevil?” Matt takes off his glove and runs his fingers over the spot where a bruise should be blooming again, then sweeps them down across the length of Foggy’s jaw ever so gently. Foggy huffs a laugh against his fingertips. “I guess you could check me for pockmarks now?”  

Matt nods and crowds a little closer.

Foggy’s skin is smooth and unmarked across his jaw, his cheeks, his forehead. There’s a dimple near his temple that he runs his thumb over a couple of times, until Foggy swallows and says “old, had that- before,” and a nick near his left ear explained away by “clumsy mason, taking me off my last plinth.” Matt shudders at the thought, that Foggy could have been dropped and smashed, _killed_ , and it gives him the presence of mind to take his hands back.

He can’t explain the slight tremor in them. (He can.)

“We should go home,” he says, voice too low, and turns away before Foggy can see him wince, because his apartment isn’t Foggy’s home, and Matt’s kidding himself if he thinks it could be.

It never usually takes long between Matt finding someone attractive and the guilt setting in, and Foggy is no exception. Now that he knows his own feelings, he can see every way he’s been hoarding Foggy to himself, forcing him into dependence. He’s enjoyed the way Foggy turns to him, like a flower towards the sun, even if Matt’s been the one basking in the warmth of the attention. It’s selfish, and wrong, and he needs to do better. Soon. Any day now.

He follows up with Jess about the documents and it’s not a week later he can put them on the table, next to the laptop Foggy’s using like a digital native now. “Hey, awesome. Nelson — like the column? Funny. Matt, this is amazing, how much do I owe you?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I mean, yeah, nothing in comparison to curse breaking and the gift of _life_ but, like, actually, in dollars?”

He shrugs and goes to get a beer. “Jess said ten thousand.” That ought to shut down any thoughts that Matt wants to be paid back.

“Hmm. I can have it to you by Friday.”

Matt does not spit-take beer all over his kitchen. He does _not_ , and any stories to the contrary are vicious lies. “Friday?”

“Well, I need  a couple of days to set up a bank account and get a cheque to clear. That okay?”

“Where are you getting cheques?”

“Oh! I’ve been selling my stuff. Do you know, I have the best example of a fifteenth century spinning top outside of a royal collection?”

“You’re selling the contents of your _purse_?” (Foggy’s purse is something of a running joke. Apparently manbag is an appalling neologism that speaks more to this era’s discomfort with gender. Foggy always sounds like a psychiatrist when he’s embarrassed.)

“Yes. And my tunic. Even the hose, historians want used hose, it’s kind of gross. They’ve offered thousands of dollars. It’s okay, I’ve established a convincing backstory and a couple of shell accounts to keep everything secure.”

Matt gapes. “I’m going to stop leaving you alone with the internet.”

“You’d have to stop leaving me alone for that,” Foggy responds waspishly, and Matt shuts his mouth with a click.

“You’re right. C’mon, you’ve got an ID, we’re going to the tavern.”

“You can call it a bar, Matt,” Foggy says, but there’s a thrum of excitement in his voice as he gathers up his papers and goes to change into his one good outfit. (Matt disapproves, but Foggy’s affection for sweatshirts cannot be denied. ‘ _They’re so soft’._ Matt’s managed to get him one smart jacket and decent jeans, but it’s a bit tricky to shop online when he can’t see and Foggy refuses to be more helpful than ‘ _They’re blue?'._ )

Karen and Kirsten love him immediately, practically the moment they walk into Josie’s. Kirsten finds Foggy’s rant about Real Ale (“call this ale? This tastes decent! It has flavour and body! Where's the watery unpleasantness?”) totally charming. Karen asks him where he learned so much about psychiatry. Both are complete suckers for Foggy’s many, many lies:

“Oh, we met at the courthouse. I'm a paralegal, I was helping the opposing counsel, total asshole, Matt wiped the floor with him. Anyway, he was chewing me out afterwards for mistakes that were entirely on him and Matt just swanned up and rescued me. It was heroic.”

They're crammed together in the booth, Foggy wedged warm and pliant against Matt’s side, so he only has to turn his head a fraction to mutter, “stop making that face when I lie, it's much harder to be convincing.”

“Heroic?” Kirsten asks, in that knowing way that means one of her eyebrows is at her hairline and her canines are showing. Karen coughs into her wine.

“Absolutely. Anyway, I got fired, sort of between jobs at the moment, but Matt’s a silver lining, you know?”

“And you've been dating since then?” Karen asks. She’s always been one for the insightful follow up question. Matt feels his face warm and even Foggy trips up, sloshes some of his beer across the table.

“Uh, no, we're not- we're just friends,” Matt manages, before skulling his whisky and shoving the glass across to Kirsten. “Your round.”

“I'm a widower,” Foggy adds, and Matt _can't tell_ if he's lying, his heart already beating faster from the embarrassment. But something about the way Foggy twists the signet ring around his finger speaks to the truth of it.

Matt doesn't mean to pry, but later, when he's pretending that Foggy's helping him hail a cab instead of walking him home, he can't help but trace his fingers over the ring. “Were you really-?”

“Yeah,” Foggy answers, and he sounds a little heavier. “But I don't need to tell you it was a really long time ago.”

“And she died?”

“Everyone I knew died, Matt,” Foggy says, almost wry. “It was after I got cursed, she was a widow before I was. I'm over it, don't worry.” His other hand lands on top of Matt’s, over the ring. “I should probably sell this. It's worth a lot, enough to put down a deposit on a lease or-”

“Don't.” Matt links their fingers together, squeezes gently. “You don't have to, not yet. You can stay with me, as long as you need to. Keep the ring.”

Foggy squeezes back. “Okay.”

They walk home hand in hand.

They fall into a pattern of sorts. Matt works and comes home to a dinner that took pots and pans and a stove rather than a microwave to make. He tells himself he ditches his sofa because of the blood on it, not the hope that Foggy will stay longer on the new one that pulls out.

In the days he works quicker, better, almost eager to get home but happy enough to plough through depressing deposition after depressing deposition without yelling at Kirsten or Karen. (That they both make note of this makes him a little shamefaced, but they’re kind about it. Kirsten even smirks and says “If work keeps up like this, we’re gonna need a paralegal.”)

Some nights Matt goes out alone, and comes home with Foggy. Some nights he comes home to Foggy, snoring with his head on a first aid kit to prevent Matt stitching himself. There’s a new rumour around the city, about a guy with a jaw like stone who weighs a tonne, and sometimes it gets jumbled in with the girl who can punch _through_ stone and the guy with unbreakable skin. Sometimes it gets mixed in with the Devil. Sometimes they’re partners.

The rumour doesn’t mention a killer pasta sauce that no one who grew up eating pottage and bread made of grit should be able to whip up at a moment’s notice. It doesn’t cover how a man made of stone could be so warm to the touch, when he asks to hold hands or hug or bump fists, still delighted by movement and texture and pressure after so many years standing still.

Matt lets Foggy touch him as much as he wants, but he tries to keep himself from touching back. He starts to deplore his reflexes, every time he finds himself reaching for Foggy’s arm, to wrap an arm around his shoulders, to trace the hairs on the nape of his neck.

He’s not naive. He knows that, widower or not, six hundred years old or not, Foggy looks. Looks when Matt backflips through the window, looks when Matt stretches out in his sweatpants each morning, looks when he takes off his tie at the end of the day. He can’t smell arousal, exactly, Foggy’s odd chalky smell still blocking out most hints of sweat, but he can hear his heartbeat stutter and settle again when Matt smiles at the sound.

It’s tricky, keeping his hands to himself, but he reminds himself every morning (and at about noon, and three times in the evening, when Foggy’s sleepy and fond) that it’s taking advantage. That if he wants to be the hero, and not the Devil, of the tale, he’ll win Foggy his freedom and let him enjoy it.

Foggy does start leaving the apartment more, and Matt tries not to miss him. Mostly it’s just to the bodega or antique shops and valuers, the kind who don’t mind not looking too closely at Foggy’s credentials as long as they can get up close and personal with his coin collection. On Sundays, though, Foggy goes to church — not with Matt, but back to St Francis’, and Matt hasn’t had the heart to ask if he goes inside. He takes back the hoodie and the raincoat though.

It’s not quite enough, but somehow they smooth through the rough edges, the awkward moments when they pass too close in the small kitchen, Kirsten’s murmured comments and Karen’s bald questions.

That is, until one day Matt reaches the hallway outside his apartment and he can hear Foggy crying. Running doesn’t get him through the front door any faster, but he sprints anyway.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” Foggy lies, even as he sniffs. Matt’s prepared to let it go, but when he reaches out for Foggy's hand he shies away. “Don't touch me,” he whispers, more frightened than angry, and that's much worse, Foggy always wants to be touched, he's almost as tactile as Matt, and Matt reads with his fingertips.

“Foggy,” he says, voice low in warning, and then he ninjas a little to take his hand.

Foggy’s fingers are cold, dry and rough to the touch, rougher than any dry skin he's felt. They're heavy in his grip. And they don't move, don't flex out when Matt tries to lace their fingers together in reassurance. They're stone.

He wraps his free arm around Foggy's shoulders, pulls him close until the tip of Foggy's nose — warm, a little wet, still 100% human — tucks against his collarbone. “It's coming back,” he murmurs, and Foggy nods into his chest, his breathing quick and erratic. “Is it just your fingers?” Foggy stills against him, then slowly shakes his head. Matt finally puts together how slowly he’s been moving lately, the slight limp. He’d thought it was a stubbed toe. “What can I do?”

“I don’t think — maybe it’s just how it works. God, I’m so sorry, all the trouble you went to and it was all _pointless. Abso-fucking-lutely_ POINTLESS.” He’s shaking in Matt’s arms, and Matt’s eyes prick with salt.

“No, no, there’s must be something I can do. I did it once, right? Or the Devil, I _took_ you. What if I took you, uh, somewhere? I’ll take you outside, come on.” He grabs Foggy’s hand and half drags him up the stairs and through the skylight. Outside he can hear the sirens, the wind across the tiles, the bustle of twilight, and the plink, plink, plink of Foggy’s tears hitting the concrete. The hand in his grip stays cold and solid.

“What if I took you on holiday?”

“Don’t be dumb, Matt, that’s not going to work. And you can’t afford it anyway.” Foggy sounds like he’s smiling through his tears, and Matt’s chest aches.

“I could take you in a fight.” His voice sounds desperate to his own ears.

“Not disputing that, but really? Are you just going to brainstorm all the ways you can take me?”

“I’m trying to think laterally!”

“Well, maybe you should try horizontally!” Foggy snaps. Matt inhales sharply.

He knows, rationally, that it only sounds like the most plausible solution because he _wants_ it to be. Oh, he could probably unleash a spiel about sex and power and life, about rituals older than time, anything, but the truth is his pulse has picked up, his palms are warm, his fingers itch to touch.  

He slides his free hand onto Foggy’s shoulder, then up to his jaw, steps in closer, but Foggy staggers back and it’s only his grip on those stony fingers that keeps Matt grounded.

“Matt, no, I didn’t mean- It wouldn’t work, pretend I didn’t-”

“It could. It might.”

“No, Matt.” He sounds wounded, but firm. “No. I’m not asking you for that.”

“Foggy, I’m asking you.” He traces over his stone fingers, his cracked palm, up to where his pulse is fluttering in his wrist, warm and alive. “Foggy, Foggy, can I _take_ you?”

Foggy opens his mouth for a sound that’s more sob than word, raw and wet, but it’s enough of a yes for Matt to press in, fingers careful on his jaw, matching the angle of his chin for a kiss that’s as soft as a whisper until Foggy wraps an arm around Matt’s waist, tugs him up and kisses with a fierceness Matt’s only too happy to match.

Foggy’s arm is solid at his back and Matt can’t edge backwards — not that he wants to — and there’s something comforting and exciting at once about being held so firm. He crowds forwards instead, presses Foggy into the doorframe of the roof access, all along the length of him, chest, hips, knees.

Foggy surges back at him, hips hitching, and tries to push his hand through Matt’s hair. Matt hisses, unthinking, as the stone scrapes at his scalp and Foggy yanks away from him with a snarl of frustration, slams his unmoving hand into the brick with a horribly crunch that pulls Matt’s heart into his mouth. “Don’t,” he yelps, and grabs for Foggy’s hand before he can take out any more anger on it, cradles it between both of his. All five fingers are still intact, solid and flat together, like a priest giving benediction. Foggy’s breath is still damp and fast but he’s still as Matt presses a kiss to his cold palm. “Be careful with yourself, please.”

“You’re one to talk,” Foggy murmurs, but he pulls Matt back for kisses that feel gentle, caring, and if Matt were really reading into things, _loving_. By the time they reach the bottom of the stairs, Foggy’s hands settled on his waist, Matt’s fingers on the buttons of his shirt, he has to forcibly remind himself that he's only getting what he wants because Foggy’s like is at stake. Funny how the universe always gives him breaks he’ll have to feel horribly guilty about later.

Still, if he only does this once, he'll do it right. Foggy's fizzing under his touch, but Matt doesn't flatter himself — it's been almost six hundred years, anyone would have him making those bitten off sounds, palming his own dick through his jeans with a  flat, unmoving hand when it gets too much. That Matt is barely any less keyed up, well… supersenses and repressed lust will do that, he knows from experience.

He backs Foggy into the bedroom, gets both their shirts off since Foggy's fingers can't cooperate. Foggy practically flings himself onto the bed and makes a positively orgiastic noise Matt is quite annoyed he didn't force out himself. “These sheets! So this is what a modern bed is meant to feel like!”

“You said you liked the sofa,” Matt protests, dropping his trousers. The action makes Foggy's response stick in his throat for a moment or two, so when it comes it's much more fond.

“The company's better in the bed.”

Matt beams in his general directions and joins him, straddling his hips. A stony palm skates over his abs quickly, before Foggy snatches it back. “It's okay,” Matt groans.

“I can barely feel it,” Foggy demures.

“But I can.” He grabs at Foggy's hand, places it on his chest, over his heart. The first graze of stone, rough as sandpaper, over his nipple has him throwing his head back with a shout. He rocks his hips up into air, then grinds his ass down and feels Foggy's matching hardness — thick, and reassuringly warm — beneath him.

“Okay, I felt that,” Foggy chokes out, and Matt grins and leans down to kiss him again.

Matt has to take Foggy’s jeans and briefs off, inch them down past feet that can’t flex at the ankle. He wonders, briefly, how he missed it, the stiffening of Foggy’s joints, but he’s wearing three pairs of thick socks to muffle the sound of stone on wood. Matt strips them off too. He’s not sure when Foggy got the idea that he needed protecting, but he tries to disabuse him of the notion as he runs his palms up Foggy’s legs, feels stone give way to skin a few inches up his calves.

There’s sweat springing up behind Foggy’s knees, at the meeting of his thighs, a clean, sharp smell that for once overpowers the chalk. Matt presses his nose against the inside of Foggy’s thigh, follows it with his mouth when Foggy’s legs fall open and he keens.

Matt crawls up a step or two, adjusts and licks up the length of Foggy’s cock, but before he can get his mouth on it, Foggy tugs him up by the shoulder. “Don’t. I know you’re trying, but I don’t- need that. It’s too much. Don’t, please.” Matt freezes, guilt heavy across his shoulders. They stay like that, Matt poised above him, panting but still, for a few seconds, before he presses a gentle kiss to Foggy’s jaw.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “Do you want to stop?” Foggy shakes his head, but this close Matt can smell the trace of salt, and a brush of his thumb over Foggy’s cheek confirms he’s crying again. “Foggy, I’m so sorry.”

“S’not your fault. Fucking _wizards_.” He sniffs, and Matt rolls onto his side, kisses Foggy’s shoulder, and waits. “Sorry,” he says, eventually. “Just- felt too real. Can we just, uh, get it over with?”

Matt’s glad of the dark as he winces. “Yeah, of course, I’m sorry. But-” and he hesitates again, torn between the guilt of confession and concealment “-it’s real for me.”

Foggy tenses. “Real enough?” he hedges.

“Real,” Matt repeats. “Do you want to st-” and Foggy rolls to face him and surges into a kiss, messy and fast.

“If you’re faking, I will end you,” he mutters against Matt’s lips, but his heart doesn’t spike with fear and Matt can kiss the words away.

He doesn’t dare leave Foggy, too worried that this fragile understanding will shatter if he stops kissing him for more than a moment, so he just scrabbles for lube and condoms with his free hand between kisses to Foggy’s mouth, neck, to the chip in his ear and the dimple on his temple. As he moves on top again, Foggy’s legs open for him and he shucks his boxers and settles between them.

He pops the cap on the lube, then hesitates. “It’s to-”

“I know what it’s for,” Foggy says, dry, and then at Matt’s look, adds: “You left me alone with _the internet_.”

“It’ll hurt,” Matt warns, and Foggy scoffs.

“Not my first time.”

Matt’s jaw might drop, a little. “What?”

“I was medieval, not a monk!” And Foggy’s definitely had that line prepared, what the hell? (Who for, he wonders for a moment, and the obvious answer, _you_ , makes him smirk.)

“You were married!”

“Not from birth!” Those stone fings scrape at his waist, settle on his hip. “Fucking touch me, Matty.”

He obliges. Foggy’s tight around two fingers, tight and incredibly responsive, groaning at the stretch and urging Matt to move _faster_ in guttural grunts. His language slips a little: zounds and sard and the eternal Saxon fuck. Matt’d focus on learning them, but he’s more interested in the way Foggy shouts when he crooks his fingers just so, how eagerly he takes a third.

“Now, Matty,” Foggy growls, and Matt will never get sick of that nickname now, never forget that tone (and he really hopes Stick doesn’t show up soon, because yikes.) He hitches Foggy’s knees up a little further before he rolls on a condom and presses in. Foggy’s low, long _fuck_ is punctuated by a taut rip as his stone heel shreds the silk sheets, and he adds “fuck, _fuck_ , sorry,” before Matt can hush him with a thrust and a scrape of teeth across his collarbone. Fuck the sheets, fuck the bed, fuck everything that isn’t this heat, this closeness.

They move slowly but certainly together, until Matt’s lost the presence of mind to close his mouth, pressing open kisses to every part of Foggy he can reach, until his hair is damp around his face with sweat. He thinks, distantly, that he’s never felt so warm before, so totally held, and it occurs to him that magic might just have something to do with it, but then Foggy groans again and he’s too distracted to consider it further.

There’s no frantic rush, no sudden race to the finish — Matt just mouths at Foggy’s jaw, skates a hand down to wrap around his dick, and Foggy comes undone at the touch, head thrown back and Matt’s name on his lips. Matt can’t help but follow, and it’s about all he can manage to tie off the condom and throw it (unerringly) into the trash before turning into Foggy’s side and listening to him fall asleep.

The last thing he feels, before he drifts off, is Foggy’s fingers curling around his wrist.

In the morning he wakes bare minutes before his alarm and fumbles through switching it off with one hand to turn it off before it can disturb the moment, his other still tangled with Foggy’s. Foggy smells different, of sex and sweat, and though the chalk is still there it’s become the undertone, barely there beneath Matt’s ‘odourless’ shampoo and the coconut bodywash that should be too sweet for his nose but settles well on Foggy’s skin.

It’s maybe ten minutes before Foggy’s breathing shifts to wakefulness, and another two or three before the line of his back tenses against Matt’s front.

Matt takes a deep breath and rolls away to lie on his back. He wants his glasses, suddenly, wants to hide whatever his face is doing, even though Foggy’s still turned away, can’t see him. “I’ll get coffee,” he says, nonsensically, the first thing he can think of, and starts to move off the bed.

Foggy puts a hand on his chest, heavy and solid, and Matt can’t move. The hand is perfectly warm though, perfectly human, the pads of Foggy’s fingers soft and gentle. Matt can’t help it — the feeling of being kept still, pinned, so effortlessly sets his blood racing, but Foggy, when he speaks, sounds more prepared for serious talking than sex.

“Matt, last night, you said — you _implied_ , I guess — that you, uh, wanted, uh, me. Which was kind, and all, if you didn’t-”

“Foggy,” he interrupts, and his words are a little quick, a little desperate. “I do want you.”

“Really?” Hesitant, hopeful.

“Give me two minutes,” he jokes — but not really jokes, his hips hitching even as his chest stays still under the comforting weight.

“Oh! Oh. I want you, too,” Foggy adds, a little unnecessarily, and then his fingers flex on Matt’s chest, pushing slightly, and Matt can’t help but groan. Foggy pulls his hand back like Matt’s burnt him. “Sorry! I didn’t realise I could still _do_ that-” and Matt has to interrupt him again.

“Also not a problem.” A beat of silence, and he’s rewarded with both of Foggy’s hands on him as he moves onto his knees next to him. Matt’s smile stretches almost to his ears, but nothing else happens — Foggy stays still, just _watching_ , Matt supposes. “What are you doing?”

“Taking my time,” Foggy replies. “You better get used to it, I’ve had a lot of practice.” But he bends and brushes a kiss across Matt’s smile, and chuckles when Matt tries to chase him backwards and can’t. He shifts his hands to Matt’s shoulders and Matt tilts his chin, exposes the column of his neck. “You know,” Foggy says, conversationally, though his voice is warmer, “you wait 600 years for the Devil to take you, you expect it to be body and soul. But I was expecting more hellfire. And I didn’t think you’d take my heart as well.”

“That’s only fair — I think you took mine the moment you gave me that stupid hoodie.”

“I took that back,” Foggy muses. “It was for the needy.”

“I’m not needy any more,” Matt agrees. “I’ve got you.”

“Oh, you _sap_ ,” Foggy replies. Like he can talk. He bends to kiss him again and Matt grins into his mouth.

“Are we stopping? I have at least three more lines. Melting your heart of stone, for example.”

“In a minute you’ll be _stone dead_.”

“Admit it, you’re hard as a-”

“No, this doesn’t get my rocks off.”

(A lie. It does.)

**Author's Note:**

> I DON'T EVEN KNOW. I was drunk, maybe? It was crack and then DEAD WIFE? AND CRYING? I DON'T UNDERSTAND ME.
> 
> Also I am trying to learn tumblr, please teach me, I'm ctimenefic


End file.
